


just grab a hold of my hand

by ainewrites



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Mutual Pining, always and forever a happy ending, and everyone is scared, and these two are so in love but too terrified to admit it, but a happy ending, for the second time, in which the world may be ending, takes place about a year after the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 01:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14842982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainewrites/pseuds/ainewrites
Summary: At first, it’s nothing worth concerning themselves over.Just the slightest uptick in calls, just the slightest jumps in the equipment. It comes in waves, they think. Some months are a little worse than others. It’s nothing worth concerning themselves over.Until it was.-In which it takes the threat of a literal apocalypse for these two to admit their feelings





	1. The Before

**Author's Note:**

> While typically I have a rule against posting one multi-chaptered fanfic before the other is completed, I've actually had this half-finished and sitting in my drafts for a while. And, well, finals are coming up. I only have so many eggs and my procrasti-baking was put to a stop because other people in the family needed to use the oven (which I continue to hate, by the way), so I sat down and wrote.
> 
> And here we are.
> 
> Brief sidenote: The title comes from the Of Monsters and Men song Yellow Light, which I've been thinking of as the theme song for this fic. And, ignore me if this sounds a little weird, but to me the song is kind of soft and a little bittersweet, which fits this fic really well, in my opinion.

At first, it’s nothing worth concerning themselves over.

Just the slightest uptick in calls, just the slightest jumps in the equipment. It comes in waves, they think. Some months are a little worse than others. It’s nothing worth concerning themselves over.

Until it was.

-

It had been cold the day they had set up the monitors. The four of them, all bundled up against the November chill, Patty and Erin and Abby huddled together for warmth as Holtzmann brandished a small, dark gray circle in the air.

“These nifty little buggers are connected to one of my computers,” she was explaining, seemingly unaffected by the cold. “If there’s a sudden jump in paranormal activity, I’ll get an alert and we’ll be able to head off the attack before it gets super bad.”

“Preventing another Rowen situation?”

“Preventing another Rowen situation,” Holtz confirms, grinning, stuffing the monitor back into her bag. “Because as exciting as that was, I’d prefer not to deal with any more creepy little basement-dwelling weirdos than necessary.”

“Baby, I’d say exciting is the wrong word,” Patty says, shaking her head. Holtz just grins, adjusting the strap of her large, silver bag across her shoulder. She claps her hands together. “Now, all we need to do is set these guys up and we’re good to go!”

And by “set these guys up”, Holtz apparently meant that they needed to place the magnetic discs every few miles along all the ley lines in New York. This roused some protests until a way-too-cheerful Holtzmann had brought up the whole “it will prevent another almost apocalypse!” thing, and although the grumbling hadn’t stopped, they had plowed forward.

And it had been kind of…fun. Sure, the wind was bitter and even with her four layers Erin was absolutely freezing, but Holtzmann made it impossible not to enjoy herself. The tiny woman bounded along, sticking the discs to light poles and fences and sewer drain grates, promising that it would take either a hurricane or an act of the gods to make them budge.

“Even then,” Holtz had said, jumping up to slap a monitor on a fire escape, “it has to be one heck of a hurricane. The magnets are of my own invention.”

And her delight is infectious. Erin can’t help but pulled along, watching as Holtzmann dances to the music in her own head, the wind through the streets leading her in a waltz Erin could never learn but Holtz seems to instinctually know. It’s endearing and a little weird, and utterly _Holtzmann_ , and even though Erin is cold down to her bones there’s a warmth in her stomach and a flutter in her chest.

Afterwards, they pile into a small coffee shop, filling up a corner table, a little loud, a little rowdy, and Erin curls her hands around the warm mug, letting it seep into her skin. Holtzmann slides in next to her, grinning. She’s pink-cheeked from the cold and her hair is in an even-crazier tangle than normal, the wind coaxing it into wild curls.

“Feel how cold my hands are,” she says, stripping off the fingerless gloves she insisted on wearing even though Erin tried _three times_ to get her to wear gloves with fingers, wrapping her hands around Erin’s. And her fingers are ice against Erin’s skin, but there is that warmth again, a hot chocolate sort of comfort low in her gut, and Erin doesn’t understand why. Holtzmann is smiling and Erin is frozen and it feels like they’re on the edge of _something._

And then Holtz takes her ice cubs she calls hands and presses them against the back of Erin’s neck, and Erin shrieks and bats her away while Holtzmann cackles, and the moment is gone.

-

They average about two busts a week. Most of the calls they get are either pranks or some New Yorker getting themselves worked up over a strange shadow on the wall, but for actual ghosts, they average two a week.

Three or four a week isn’t too unusual, a little more than normal, sure, but they tell themselves that these things come in waves, that it’s not a static thing, ghosts breaking through the barrier.

It’s when they go on five busts in as many days do they start getting concerned. And it just keeps happening, the intensity and the regularity of the calls growing. Soon they’re going on two or three calls a day, and they’re all working themselves into the ground.

They show it in different ways.

Abby is constantly irritated, lashing out at the most innocent of things. Patty gets quiet, her usual friendliness and constant chatter draining away. Erin gets more anxious, falling back into her paranoid, desperate to please ways. And Holtzmann just collapses. Erin finds her one morning curled up on the floor of her lab, tucked under her desk, and it takes Erin calling her name three times before she can rouse Holtz from her slumber.

They’re all exhausted. Their aches turn into real hurts and they still can’t stop, working through injury and through pain because they have to, because there’s no one else who can do this, and they can’t leave New York alone.

Still, they tell themselves it’s fine, it’s not worth concerning themselves over, that it will die away soon. It’s a little past the one-year anniversary of Rowen’s almost-apocalypse, maybe the barrier just gets a little weaker then. It’s not worth concerning themselves over.

But it is.

-

The numbers can’t be explained away. They’re here, in front of Erin and she knows what it means. Holtzmann knows, too. Erin can tell by her pale face, by the way her face is utterly devoid of its usual humor.

“Please tell me I’m wrong,” she still asks, still pleads with Erin, and Erin’s heart breaks, a little bit, because Holtz sounds afraid, and she wants so badly to tell her that she’s wrong, that the numbers don’t say what she thinks they do.

But she can’t lie to her. Not about something like this.

She shakes her head, once, and something cracks behind Holtzmann’s eyes.

-

“So, the world is ending.”

Abby’s matter of fact delivery is jarring as she spreads out the papers on her desk, the numbers and the graphs build up over the past weeks saying something none of them can deny. Holtzmann’s monitors have done their job, and in doing so, they have spelled out doom.

“Yep,” Holtzmann says, too brightly. “And we’ll all wave goodbye to this burning hellhole of world.” She’s trying to be funny, trying to lighten the mood, but Erin can hear how her voice shakes, can see the fear that comes behind the light words, and it breaks her heart.

“Nope,” Patty says, shaking her head. “Nope. Y’all are giving up too quickly. This is what we do. We’ve stopped one apocalypse, who can say we can’t stop another?” She turns to Erin. “How long do we have?”

“Four days,” Erin says hollowly, and something in Patty’s face freezes, for just a second. But her voice is determined when she continues.

“And that’s four more days than we got with Rowen,” Patty insists. “We’re the Ghostbusters. _We can do this_.”

“It could be wrong,” Holtz says, and Erin can tell she’s trying so, so hard to keep her voice light. “My monitors could be wrong.”

But the others are all shaking their heads, and Erin knows why. Because she trusts Holtzmann’s machines the same way she trusts the woman herself. With her life. And sure, they have an unsettling tendency to catch on fire and maybe sometimes they explode, and with the amount of radiation they give off it’s a miracle none of the four women have grown that extra eye or third arm none of them want but all are kind of expecting. But they work, they do what they’re supposed to do. And if Holtz made the monitors, then they are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

“So, then, we have four days to figure this out,” Patty says, she pushes, and Abby nods, once.

“Four days,” Abby echoes, and there’s the edge of determination in her voice now, too. Abby never gives up without a fight. Abby will go down kicking and screaming, until her final, dying breath she will be fighting.

But Holtz…Holtz just looks down at her hands, curled in her lap, and Erin can see that they’re shaking, that Holtzmann is shaking, and Erin feels like crying.

She reaches over, wraps her hand over Holtzmann’s shaking ones, and their fingers knit together. They stay like this, holding hands under the table, like the other is a lifeline and they’re afraid to let go.

-

Erin finds herself watching Holtz.

She’s always watched Holtz, since that first day over a year ago, when she appeared behind the pile of machinery with a blowtorch and a pick-up line. She’s fascinated by the engineer, by the way Holtzmann carries herself through life, and she can’t stop watching.

She doesn’t understand the feeling, somewhere behind her ribcage.

She’s never had much luck with relationships. They’ve all crumbled to pieces eventually, because inevitably, Erin has always cared too much for someone who doesn’t care enough, or worse, when it’s over, she’s discovered she didn’t really care at all. Somehow, the lack of heartbreak is worse than the heartbreak, because at least the heartbreak means that there was something, but the lack of it means that there’s nothing.

And Erin feels so much for Holtz. So much that it hurts, sometimes.

It’s not lust, because Erin knows what lust feels like. It’s what she felt for Kevin, before she realized that Kevin was basically a Golden Retriever in human form. And yes, there’s traces of lust in there, because _god_ , Holtzmann is attractive, but mostly it’s just this tiny sunburst in her chest. Bright and beautiful and always there.

Erin doesn’t know what to do with it, how to deal with it, only knows that sometimes it hurts with _wanting_ and it scares her with its intensity and yet she never wants this feeling to stop.

-

It’s a countdown in all of their heads, a doomsday clock ticking down, whispering _your time is almost up, you can’t stop this_ over and over in their ears. They throw themselves in their work, letting themselves be swept away by the familiarity of the Firehouse and their jobs inside it.

But it’s different, still.

Because the world may be ending, and they’re all scared, and Erin thinks that Holtzmann might be the most scared of them all. Because typically the second floor is alive with music turned up to volumes that could make your ears bleed and crashing and the occasional shriek of alarms and Holtzmann singing at the top of her lungs.

But it’s quiet. It’s so quiet.

Erin didn’t know Holtz could be quiet. She’s surrounded by noise, always, and yet when Erin goes upstairs, she just finds Holtz bent over a workbench, goggles over her eyes and a new weapon in front of her, working in silence.

“Holtz,” Erin says, and she looks up, a tiny, blonde owl in yellow-tinted goggles, and that sunburst in Erin’s chest _burns_.

“Do you want something to eat?”

They’ve all been forgetting to eat, lately. Erin’s been standing in front of her whiteboard for hours, only looking up recently, eyes burning and back aching, and realizing that she hadn’t eaten in almost twelve hours. And Holtzmann hadn’t come down from her lab in as many hours, and Erin knows she was up almost all night, and likely hasn’t eaten at all.

But Holtz just shakes her head, once and silently, returning without a word to the mess of metal in front of her, and Erin worries because she can’t help but worry.

Erin doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to put her worry into words. So instead, she goes back downstairs, leaving Holtz in her achingly silent lab.

-

“I’m so scared, Rebecca.”

Erin freezes on the steps up to Holtz’s lab, pressing against the wall. Holtzmann’s voice floats around the corner, and even from here, Erin can hear the traces of tears in it, and she can feel something in her chest break.

“I don’t want to let them down,” Holtz is saying, and Erin edges up one more step, unable to stop listening, unable to force herself to either enter the lab or walk away. “But what if I can’t do anything? I can’t…I can’t watch them die.”

There’s a silence, Holtzman clearly listening to the person on the other end of the phone, and when she does speak again, her voice is so quiet that Erin has to strain to hear.

“I can’t bring myself to tell her. What if…what if I scare her away?”

And suddenly, Erin feels like she has no right to be hearing this, and she quietly creeps back down the steps. One her way back up she makes a point to pound up as loudly as possible, making her approach as dramatic as she can. She rounds the top of the staircase to see Holtzmann sitting on one of her stools, her cellphone pressed against her ear.

“Yeah,” she says into the phone. “Just…just in case…I love you, okay?” She pulls her phone away from her ear and tries to smile at Erin, but it wobbles and falls soon afterwards.

“Rebecca Gorin,” she tells Erin, and it takes Erin a moment to realize Holtz was telling her who she was talking to on the phone. “I wanted to talk to her again, just in case…in case…” her voice trails off, leaving Erin to fill in the blanks.

“You’ll see her again, Holtz,” Erin says softly, and Holtzmann nods, once, clears her throat, and asks Erin if the papers forgotten in her hands are the numbers for the new and improved proton shotgun.

They both pretend that Erin can’t see the redness of Holtz’s eyes.

-

The four days drag on forever and yet take no time at all. And here they are, the night before the world may end. By this time tomorrow, they may all be dead, and yet no one but them knows. Outside the windows of the Firehouse, New York lives on.

Inside, it’s quiet. The calm before the storm.

Kevin had gone home long ago, departing with a cheerful goodnight and a “see you tomorrow, bosses!” and no one could bring themselves to correct him. Erin isn’t even sure if anyone told him.

Abby’s asleep on the couch, an empty glass of wine on the coffee table. She looks young in sleep, curled up like a cat, and Erin tucks a blanket around her, carefully folding up her glasses and setting them next to the wine glass. Abby has barely slept, and the exhaustion and anxiety of the last few days have finally caught up to her.

Patty is in her room, and when Erin walks past her door, she hears the gentle murmur of voices, both Patty’s and those unknown. Her family, Erin thinks. She’s talking to her family. Her family, that doesn’t know that anything is wrong. Earlier that afternoon, Abby called her family too, Skyping them on her desk computer under the pretense of checking in.

She had talked to them for more than an hour, and when she had hung up, she had cried.

There’s a lump in Erin’s throat as she carefully opens and shuts the door to her own room, settling down onto the cot. She doesn’t have any family to call. Her family is within these four walls, and yet she still feels so, so alone.

She sits on her bare cot in her bare room and she considers crying, but she’s too tired to cry, to tired to be afraid anymore.

She’s too tired to be afraid anymore.

She gets up and leaves her room, padding down the stairs and into the darkness of Holtzmann’s lab. And there, in a small hallway, is a door. On those door are letters, like the sort that adorn the outside of children’s bedrooms, spelling out _Holtz_.

Erin knocks, and the door opens, and there she is, in pajama pants with her hair down around her shoulders, and Erin’s breath catches in her throat, and that sunburst in her chest _aches_ and she is not afraid, not anymore.

“Can I come in?” she asks, and Holtzmann steps aside, letting her through.

-

They all have rooms in the Firehouse. Holtzmann is the only one who uses her regularly, but they all trade off shifts throughout the week, at least one of them needing to be in the Firehouse at all times in case an emergency call comes in. But while Erin’s room is bare, only a cot and a chest to keep changes of clothes, Holtzmann’s isn’t. It’s slightly cluttered and clearly lived in, and Erin takes it all in.  

There are clothes on the floor and shoes by the door and a row of succulents in the windowsill and fairy lights strung up above the bed and a row of pictures on top of a cluttered bookshelf. Pictures of Rebecca Gorin and of Abby and of Patty and of her, and that makes a lump rise in Erin’s throat again for a reason she can’t quite put her finger on.

Holtzmann sits down on her bed, patting the comforter beside her in a clear invitation, and Erin takes her up. They sit in silence for a while, a silence Erin breaks.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” she says, and there’s a prickling behind her eyes. “I can’t be alone.”

“I know,” Holtzmann says, her hand finding its way to Erin’s, and she entwines their fingers and squeezes. “I’m glad you came.”

-

They’re curled up together under the soft covers of Holtzmann’s bed. They’ve shared beds before; they’ve been sent on busts in other cities and other states, and hotel rooms aren’t cheap. But this…this feels different, and there’s that warmth in Erin’s stomach again.

“Are you scared?” Holtzmann asks. She’s on her back, staring up at the ceiling, not looking at Erin.

“I am,” she answers. “Are you?”

Holtzmann turns, and her eyes are wide and _blue_ in the dark.

“Always,” she whispers, and her hand is cupping Erin’s face, her thumb stroking Erin’s cheek, and they’re so close in this tiny bed, and Erin is too tired to be afraid anymore.

The romance novels always describe love as burning, as being set on fire from the inside out, but Erin knows it’s not like that. Love isn’t fierce and terrible and all-consuming. Love is this warmth in her belly and Holtzmann’s hands in her hair and the gentle flicker of the sunburst in Erin’s chest.

Love feels like home, Erin thinks, and kissing Holtzman feels like coming home.

-

They don’t do more than kiss. When they do fall apart, Holtzmann tucks her face into the hollow of Erin’s throat and Erin curls around Holtzmann, their hands held between them. It would be a lie to say that she didn’t think about the closeness of their bodies and the things that sometimes come after kissing, but she is tired and Holtzmann is warm and soft against Erin, and she closes her eyes.

They sleep holding on to each other, as if they’re afraid that when they wake, the other is going to be gone.

-

They gear up like it’s any other bust. Like they’re just going to load into the Ecto-1 and drive a few blocks and bust a ghost. Like in a few hours, they’ll be back.

They might not be back, though.

And before Erin closes the door to the Firehouse, she stops, takes one long, long look, committing it to memory.

-

They stand shoulder to shoulder, a team, a united front, and god, Erin loves these people, loves them with her entire heart.

They’re her family, and if she has to die, she’s glad that it’s going to be side by side with them.

“Are you ready?” Abby yells against the whipping wind, raising up her proton gun.

“Ready!” the others confirm, and Erin takes a deep breath.

“Let’s save the world, y’all,” Patty shouts, and they charge.


	2. The After

They save the world.

For a while, it seems like they won’t, and the world will end in ghostly fire. But they don’t give up, they grit their teeth and they dig in their heels and they _fight_ , and they save the world.

Sunrise finds them exhausted and hurting and bleeding, smoke wafting around them, splattered with ectoplasm. But they’re alive, they’re gloriously, almost unbelievably _alive_.

They save they world.

-

They celebrate in the private room of a hospital. Unlike with the Rowen fiasco where they all managed to walk away mostly unharmed, here they took a bit of a beating. And they’re not the only ones. The emergency room is full, and Erin knows that people will continue to trickle in for hours, yet.

This time, there’s no reverse vortex, no magic rebuild, and people got hurt. People died. It will probably be a couple of days before all the reports of the deaths come in, and it makes Erin sick to her stomach to think about. Because they saved the world, but they didn’t save anyone.

She knows they can’t save everyone, but she thinks of the bleeding, terrified people in the emergency room, the people running and screaming through the streets the night before, and she closes her eyes.

She can’t think about it, now.

But the four of them are all alive. By some miracle, they came out mostly okay. Sure, they’re all injured; Erin has a mild concussion and a broken collarbone, Patty has a few cracked ribs and sixteen stitches on her arm, and Holtzmann a dislocated knee and a magnificently purple black eye. Abby, out of all of them, managed to come out the best with only a sprained wrist. She says it’s the universe paying her back for almost being dragged to her death by the giant needle-toothed ghost of a manbaby barely a year previous.

This is why she’s the one sent on the snack run.

“Okay,” Abby says, arms full of bags of chips and cookies and cans of soda from the vending machine down the hall. “The doctors said that the alcohol would mess with the pain meds in a not fun way, and I have no interest in making sure you don’t kill yourselves. If you die, I’m just letting you kick the bucket.”

“We love you too, Abby,” Holtzmann says, reaching over to pluck a mini can of pringles from the stash that Abby has just dumped on one of the room’s two beds.

Abby smiles, throwing a bag of chips at Holtzmann before revealing the sodas she brought. “Anyways,” she says, raising up a can of root beer in one hand and ginger ale in another. “While actual alcohol is unfortunately out of the question, this has beer in the name, and isn’t ale a medieval-ish word for beer, too?”

She starts passing out the snacks, and Erin accepts the bag of cookies she’s handed, carefully settling down on one of the beds. The adrenaline is wearing off, and her body _hurts_ , overworked and stretched too far, and she’s tired, she’s so tired, but for the first time since Holtzmann first brought her those numbers four days ago, there’s not the cloud of anxiety hanging over her head.

Has it really only been four days? It feels like no time at all, and yet all the time in the world.

Holtzmann plops down on the bed, making Erin bounce, and reaches over to steal from the bag in Erin’s hand.

“How are you feeling?” Erin asks, quietly, and Holtzmann shrugs, crunching down on her stolen goods.

“Like I just got eaten by my ghost chipper,” Holtz says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “My own child betrayed me, Erin!” She flops backwards dramatically, throwing an arm up over her eyes, then peeps out at Erin from underneath, her expression suddenly more serious.

“I’ll be fine,” Holtzmann says, quietly. “We’ll all be fine.”

And Erin is tired and her head throbs and her shoulder aches and she’ll have to wear a sling for a few weeks. And Holtzmann is curled up on the bed and Abby and Patty are arguing over something stupid and they’re clearly both enjoying themselves and Holtzmann reaches out and pulls Erin down next to her.

They lie there, curled up on the hospital bed, in pain and so tired, and Erin knows for the first time in four days that everything will be okay.

-

They’re discharged from the hospital a few hours later, and they all load into the first cab they can flag down. They drop Abby off at her apartment first, and before she goes she gives them all hugs so tight that Erin swears she can feel her ribs crack. Patty is next, and she kisses Holtz and Erin on the cheek before sliding out, ad the two are left alone.

They sit in silence in the back of the cab, still squished together like the other two are still in the car, and there are butterflies in Erin’s stomach and a tingling in her fingers. She wants to hold Holtzmann’s hand.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Holtzmann says, so softly that Erin has to strain to hear her, an echo of Erin’s words the night before.

Erin reaches out, closes her hand around Holtzmann’s.

“So let’s not be alone.”

-

The Firehouse is quiet, and it makes Erin feel like she should be creeping through the shadows. Holtzmann’s crutches thump against the floor, and the first traces of morning light have started filtering through the high windows. Exhaustion drags at her bones, and it takes about fifteen minutes to navigate the staircase, both of them sore and Holtzmann unable to put much weight on one knee, but they make it, eventually.

“My bedroom is closer,” Holtzmann says, and there’s nothing else that needs to be said.

-

Erin pauses at the doorway, suddenly shy. Her memories of the night before are hazy and dreamlike, and that sunburst in her chest glows.

Holtzmann seems to sense this, and she closes her hand around Erin’s elbow and pulls her inside. The door shuts behind them.

-

In the light of her bedroom, Holtzmann is soft. Adorned in sweatpants and a hoodie and her blonde hair escaping its bun, she sits carefully on the edge of her bed, and watches Erin.

“Do you want this?” Holtz asks, and it’s a simple question, and Erin gives it a simple answer.

“I do.”

-

They curl up under the covers together. They don’t do anything more, but for now, this is okay. This is more than okay.

They seek comfort in each other’s closeness, and Erin lets the feeling of Holtzmann’s hand in hers and the warm, hazy light coming through the window push away the darkness of the night before.

They sleep.

-

The nightmares come a few days later.

Erin wakes up, drenched in sweat and gasping in panic, her chest tight _and she can’t make her lungs expand and she’s drowning in fear because she is going to die everyone she loves is going to die and she can’t do this can’t breathe can’t make her lungs expand_

and Holtzmann reaches over, and whispers “Erin, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

She whispers this until Erin can breathe again, and then she whispers “I get them too.”

-

They heal on the outside, all of them. Erin’s sling comes off and Holtzmann’s crutches are abandoned and Patty’s can move without wincing in pain and Abby can write with her right hand again. Their bruises fade from purple to yellow and then disappear, and their cuts close up and form scars.

Healing on the inside takes longer.

But that’s okay, they have time.

They saved the world, and they have time.

-

They deal with the media. The mayor’s office approves some interviews and warns them to stay far away from the others. The people of New York both thank them and blame them, and Erin knows that it’ll fade it away in time, both the adoration and the hate.

It did after Rowen, it will after this.

But still, sometimes they’ll be tracked down by a reporter on the street who will shove a camera into her face and ask her what she thinks about this or that or _can she say anything about this?_ and the terror will rise up again.

 But it’ll be okay, because when this happens Holtzmann will reach out and hold her hand, telling Erin _it’s okay, I’m here, I’m not leaving_ , and Erin will squeeze back and take a deep breath and they will continue on.

-

Erin kisses Holtzmann for the second time on the rooftop of the Firehouse.

At one-point last summer they had dragged a firepit up here, and with the warming weather they had decided to light a bonfire. Now Abby and Patty have gone back downstairs, and the logs are burning down to embers now, and Holtzmann and Erin are curled together on the couch, a blanket over their legs.

They’ve been sharing a bed in the most literal of senses for the last few months, but other than that first kiss when they both thought that the world was going to end, that’s all they’ve been doing.

But the air is cool and Holtzmann is warm and the fire is crackling, and they’re so close, and Erin’s heart is pounding and there’s warmth in her belly and Holtzmann is so, so close.

Love feels like home, and kissing Holtzmann feels like coming home.

Her lips are sticky and sweet with the remains of s’mores and her hand curls around the back of Erin’s neck, and Erin’s eyes fall closed. They aren’t burning up, they’re smoldering, warm and comfortable, Holtzmann’s hand on the back of Erin’s neck and Erin’s hand on Holtz’s hip and their legs tangled under the blanket and Holtz’s lips are sticky and sweet with the remains of s’mores.

“I think I’ve been in love with you since I first walked into your lab at Higgins,” Erin says when they’ve fallen apart and are curled up together again. Holtzmann smiles, dimples flashing, and leans her head against Erin’s shoulder.

“I think I’ve been in love with you since then, too.”

-

“Took you long enough!” Abby says, grinning, dragging Holtz and Erin into a massive hug.

Patty’s smile is equally huge, throwing her arms around Holtz and Erin as soon as Abby lets them go. “I’m so happy for y’all. Even if I’m out fifty bucks.”

That catches Erin’s attention, and she untangles herself from Patty. “Wait…you guys _bet_ on if we’d get together?”

“When you’d get together,” Abby says smugly, hands on her hips. Patty shakes her head, digging around her pockets.

“You couldn’t have held out for two more months?” She grumbles, slapping a fifty into Abby’s outstretched hand. “I said it would take you two years, but Abby said less than that.”

Erin flushes, but Holtzmann grins, looping one arm over Erin’s shoulders and the other over one of Patty’s.

“Pattycakes, you know that people can only deny their attraction to me for so long.”

Patty scoffs, laughing, and Erin smiles.

-

The light of Holtzmann’s room is dim and the fairy lights above her bed send a constellation of tiny, bright stars across her bare shoulders, and she is soft and she is quiet and she is beautiful. Erin curls her hands into the gap above Holtzmann’s hipbones and presses her forehead to Holtz’s, closing her eyes.

“Do you want this?” Holtzmann asks, soft as a sigh.

“I do,” Erin says. “I do.”

And she takes off her shirt.

-

It’s funny, how it takes the world almost ending for Erin to stop being scared.

The nightmares come and the panic attacks still sweep over her at the worst moments, but now there’s another body in the dark beside her.

They have bad nights, where neither of them can sleep, where the memories threaten to drag them under. Nights where all they can do is hold on to each other and try not to let go.

But there are good nights, too. Nights crowned with heat and wanting, with bare skin and lips against lips.

On most nights, though, they just are. They’re two women curled together under the covers, and that is perfect and that is beautiful, and Erin wonders why she was ever afraid of this.

-

It’s funny, how it takes world almost ending to create this. This bright and beautiful thing, still growing, still forming, but there and wonderful. And they have time to let it grow.

But it makes sense, when you think about it. After all, if you only have one more night, if the threat of an apocalypse grows near, how else are you going to spend that night but with the people you love?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I come to you from the land of sleep deprivation, work, and finals week, and I can't believe response I got for the first chapter of this totally self-indulgent thing that I bashed out at 10PM on a Sunday night.
> 
> It's been a good return to this fandom, I think.


End file.
